[Ambassadors] Re: Picture Book....

[Doug Berry]

--- On Sat, 1/3/09, Ian Weller <ianweller at gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Do we want to set up a website somewhere and point shoppers
> to
> Amazon.com or whatnot? (Gah, I'm thinking way too far
> ahead again)

When I mentioned using Wal-mart or Amazon as vendors, that
is of course one way we could go. We will have that 
automatically when we register with LSI. But the most profitable
way to go would be to sell any books ourselves. If a vendor
sells the book, they are going to add 15%, that is deducted
out of our profit, not from LSI.

Setting up a web page and taking orders ourselves would mean
we would make the most profit from our book.
............... 
> > Lightning Source would then send us a royalty check, I
> > think it's every three months. We can just have
> them send 
> > it to Max and he can disburse any funds.
> > 
> You OK with this, Max? We could just plan for this, and it
> would make me
> feel a lot better if we got this problem out of the way
> first ^_^

I agree. If Max could handle the money, we would just be
free to create books and not have to worry about money 
responsibilities. I think any monies should go to Red Hat
anyway, even if we have to sneak it in a back door.
...............

> Questions I have for you guys:
> 1. Does this sound reasonable? Does it seem viable that we
> can sell 105
>    copies in a year? For those who will be in the book, or
> other Fedora
>    contributors, or other Fedora fans, the $60 for the
> first set of four
>    price seems a bit large. I'm not really sure.

I am not sure what you mean with the four different books.
Is that four books at once, or one at a time? Book sales
are almost impossible to predict. But I think that the first
book will sell. It may well pay for the other four. 

One way to gage this: at this upcoming FUDCON, if we are going 
to be passing out release forms, maybe we could take a legal
pad or pledge cards and ask people "would you like to pre-order
the book your picture will be in?" If the people whose pictures 
and names are going to be in the book, won't commit to buying
it, we might as well quit right now.

Then again, we are not even bound, no pun intended, to producing
a bound book. We could go magazine style: folded pages, stapled
in the middle, the cheapest type of book. We could do any amount
of pages, 20, 40, 80, 160. 

I wonder myself, and I think that after the first couple of books,
which we could do bound, sales might drop off even from the 
most committed Fedoreans. So maybe anticipating that and going
to a zine would be better in the long run.  
..............

> (However I'm not sure who needs to register on
> LSI's website if Max is
> the one getting all the moneys.)

I definitely think it should be Max, or someone Red Hat.
LSI is going to like much better dealing with an established
corporation. All Max or whoever would have to do is go to
the Lightning Source web site, click on the "New Accounts"
button and fill out the form. Once we are registered, they
will assign us a "Guide" who will explain their system.

I think I understand the point that Paul Fields was trying
to make the other day: we are a FREE Software foundation 
and we don't want to appear to be morphing into a commercial
book publish phenomenom. But if it seems to be a Red Hat
venture and are just a Beta version of it, well....  

-- Douglas Berry --
slasherzee at fedoraproject.com